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ANXIETY
Letter in The Listener dated 17 July 2010
“Panic stations” (June 19) missed out one thing: hyperventilation
syndrome. The symptoms described in the opening paragraph, “heart is
pounding … hands are slick … pain in your chest … you
feel dizzy”, are also symptoms of this syndrome. It is likely that many
of the A&E admissions described are actually acute hyperventilation attacks.
Hyperventilation syndrome has an easily performed diagnostic test named
the Nijmegen questionnaire, which has been scientifically validated
and can be found on the internet.
The physiology behind hyperventilation is well understood. In normal
circumstances the body has a balanced level of CO2 in the bloodstream;
as the people hyperventilate, they breathe out excess CO2, causing
a drop of PaCO2 or carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. This leads to
a decrease in cerebral blood flow and a change in body pH levels. This
gives rise to the wide variety of worrying symptoms described in the
article.
The jury is still out on which comes first, anxiety or the breathing
problem. But ponder this: New Zealand has an extremely high rate of
childhood asthma; could it be that these long-term asthma sufferers
are progressing onto anxiety disorders because of a disordered breathing
pattern?
Anxiety sufferers need to be aware a component of their symptoms may
be overcome with specialised breathing retraining. There are many well-written
self-help books (eg, Hyperventilation Syndrome by Dinah Bradley)
as well as physiotherapists trained to diagnose and treat breathing-pattern
disorders.
Scott Peirce
(Sunnynook, North Shore)
and read the reply here
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